|
|
MONSOON WEDDING (green, if pale green)
|
To judge by the endless Raj dramas churned out by the BBC, India is a place of pith-helmeted jodhpur-whip-cracking oligarchs and sweltering pavement-sleepers, yet the middle class of India is larger than the entire population of the United States, growing faster than any other in the world. They carry cell phones, print business cards with email addresses, cackle over the evening newspaper's stock market pages, have nephews who've emigrated to Australia, drive BMW's, worry about their teenage son's laziness and ambiguous nascent sexuality, and play weekend foursome golf … while behind them sari-clad women balancing terra-cotta jugs on their heads walk home from the well.
As MONSOON WEDDING opens, zaftig doe-eyed sweet Aditi (Vasundhara Das) is betrothed to her Americanized fiancé Hemant (Parvin Dabas), who after the wedding will sweep her on a flying carpet to her new life in Houston. Her father Lalit Verma (Naseeruddin Shah, a tremendous subtle performance) is determined to see her off with the most extravagant wedding even as he fears he is losing her forever, so he takes out his anxiety on anorexic hyperactive caterer P. K. Dubey (Vijay Raaz), Pagliacci in a flowered shirt, who has staged 150 weddings and never his own.
Lalit's life spans an extraordinary period in India's history. After partition (1948), he matter-of-factly explains to his daughter's future father-in-law, we came to Delhi with nothing (from the Punjab, India's great western desert bordering Pakistan). Now, mourns a TV talk show panelist as he watches a celebrated dubbist demonstrate her skill by providing real-time play-by-play … of an imported porno movie, India has gone global. This fact of progress is driven home to Lalit as he watches his niece, his daughter, and his son grow up almost as aliens. The life of his childhood is gone forever. He knows this and is glad his children's live will be better, but also wistful for the loss of he knows not what, like the memory of a neighborhood corner store now demolished -- the day you see the empty lot, you deeply feel its absence even as you realize, with a shock, that you cannot recall its façade.
Culture clash and intimate anxieties -- two staples of Nair's other films (such as MISSISSIPPI MASALA) and a popular indy flick recipe, as in CHUTNEY POPCORN -- make for an easy movie to structure and film: bring an extended family together in cozy quarters and over three days have them play out a dozen of family life's familiar little dramas, then wrap it up with an exuberant wedding banquet celebration to send the audience out smiling. Like a troupe of exotic finger-cymbal dancers, Nair's cast does, helped because we recognize nary a one of them, so we bring no moviegoer expectations. That anonymity also gives them everyman accessibility. We could live in this Delhi, we realize, and if we did, we would worry about the things these characters do.
For its plot to work, a circulating big-house-stage-set movie must have a galvanizing event beyond its stated purpose, an event that manifests the dark side. (For GOSFORD PARK it was a telegraphed murder.) Since too much gloom would confuse the audience, the film must recover with an unexpected romance. Like a seasoned vaudevillian, MONSOON WEDDING neatly delivers both on bite-sized platters, wrapped around many witty lines, wonderfully colorful slice-of-life shots, and spontaneous outbursts of seductive toe-tapping Indian music as the family celebrates.
Set this movie in Pittsburgh, cast it with Steve Martin as FATHER OF THE BRIDE, and its clichés would be obvious and shallow, and looked at critically, MONSOON WEDDING is far too pat. Place it in Delhi, dazzle us with color and music and movement, people the story with fine performances and engaging characters, deliver an upbeat ending, and a feel-good movie will get applause, as this one did at the end of our screening.
The legacy of 1948's forcible sundering remains with us. India and Pakistan glare at one another across the nuclear Khyber Pass. Last December, suicide bombers armed with AK-47's and grenades strapped to their bodies broke into the Indian Parliament and blew themselves up, killing a dozen MP's. Their world is a grim place … but for this movie's two hours, it is also enchanting and charming.